United Nations of Beer

Beer to Dine For

by Nathaniel Tapley
(Beer Delegate, London, UK)

The Beer to DINE for: lame name

Beer to Dine For

No, I can't believe they called it that, either. Still, this is what I thought of it.

I have a confession to make. When I make food, I usually drink wine with it. I love beer, and it is the perfect complement to pork pies, doorstop sandwiches and anything you can eat with your fingers, but when I lay the table I usually pop the cork in a bottle of wine.

This, I know, makes me an horrific, Frenchified fop. Still, I feel better for having got it off my chest.

For your information, what I dined on whilst drinking The Beer To Dine For (they really need to do something about the name) was a chicken pie I made from the remains of the previous day's roast.

Pie and beer. Beer and pie. I'm stiffening slightly just thinking about it.

The Beer to Dine For was fresh and crisp and clean and really added to a lovely meal. It was light but not weak; delicate but not insipid. It was (and I say this as a committed oenophile as well as a beererast) the perfect complement to the meal I was eating.

Admittedly, I'd chosen something that seemed to lend itself to beer, but I'd have been happy drinking it alongside anything based on meat or starch (and thus most of English cuisine).

I'm not sure, however, that I'd do anything but dine with it. I enjoyed it, but it was not a complex beer, there was nothing to discover about it. I'll dine with The Beer to Dine For any day, but that's as far as I'll go.

Even the impossible can be found on eBay, if you are patient in your searching.
Try searching for Russian River
(you'll need to narrow down by beer name, ex. Pliny, Damnation, Temptation), Black Albert,
or any of the BIG beers. Don't overlook eBay's Belgium Beer results either...